


Lovers, Haters, Socks

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Oneshot, Period Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: "I think people are like socks.""You've lost me."





	Lovers, Haters, Socks

**Author's Note:**

> a very tiny oneshot about Charlie and Danny.

 

“I hate you so much.” Charlie’s voice is smooth and soft, it coats Danny’s brain like the molasses they put onto the roads in the summer to stop the dust from blinding people. The house is empty bar for Matthew, who has long since decided whatever indecencies may be occurring between his protege and sergeant were none of his business. This is a rare occurrence, in recent history, people are always coming and going. Rose, Doctor Harvey, Lucien, Jean, Matthew, Bill Hobart. It’s more like a boarding house of the broken and the damaged than it is the house it was when he first turned up on the doorstep looking for his aunt in nineteen-fifty-eight. He doesn’t think that Lucien would have it any other way.

They are chest to chest, shuffle dancing to the rock and roll Charlie liked to listen to on the radio when he thought no one else was listening. Danny learned how to slow dance for the snowball in highschool, and had one arm around Charlie’s waist and the other holding his hand. He’s got cold hands all the time, a bit like a corpse. But they warm up quickly with Danny’s body heat. His toes are cold as well, and never seem to warm up. Charlie occasionally complains that sharing the bed with him makes it too hot, and the domesticity of the complaint makes him smile, especially when Charlie keeps coming back night after night despite his annoyance.

They’re almost the same height, Danny just a little bit taller. Just tall enough so that Charlie can murmur into his ear and if they accidentally wear the wrong pants to work then no one will know. Danny releases his hand and slides his arm around the other side of Charlie’s waist. Charlie joined his fingers somewhere on Danny’s back, not missing a step in their slow, sad dance. He doesn’t know the song that’s playing, only that it’s upbeat and romantic. He heard it once in a diner on a date and Charlie knew all the lyrics by heart. He likes the mental image of a teenaged Charlie, long-limbed and narrow dancing in his bedroom to this song so much that he doesn’t even care that it’s improbable.

“Why?” Danny inquired, noticing that Charlie smells like deodorant, soap and a bit of sweat, probably thanks to the combination of the hot weather and their black uniforms. He probably smells something similar. It’s not an unpleasant smell as such, he never thought that he’d like the way someone smelled, but here he was. Apparently it was all part of falling in love, not that he would have any idea.

“For making me feel like this.” Charlie says, as Danny accidentally steps on one of his feet. He doesn’t even flinch, which is very kind of him. “I hate being in love.” Danny brought him in close for the next dance, intending to speed up just a little. For not the first time, he wonders how Rose could have let herself fuck this relationship up. He loves Charlie more than life itself, God help them both.  
“Why?”  
“You mean to inquire as to why I find the idea of trusting someone with my heart distasteful?” Charlie asked, mockingly.  
“Well, when you put it like that.” Danny responded. They have the whole living room to themselves, there’s no requirement to hide, and no reason to. There’s no reason to look away or to pretend. So he dips low to give Charlie a kiss. Charlie kisses back.  
“After Rose, I swore I was done with love.” Charlie said, the words vibrating through him. He’s so close that Danny can see the green marks on his neck from the chain of the St Michael pendant thing he’s been wearing for as long as Danny has known him.  “Then you came along. You broke through every defence I had in record time.”  
“I don’t recall you ever putting the breaks on.” Danny said, thinking of their first kiss alone in the garden, when Charlie was hiding from his own birthday party in very typical Charlie style. No one had come looking for them for hours, until the sun went down and Charlie had to cut the cake.  
“No, I didn’t. Because I’m a fucking idiot who falls in love with the unattainable on a regular basis  
 “You thought I was unattainable?” He asked, ignoring the part where Charlie called himself a fucking idiot. They’d been attached at the hip ever since they met, Danny doesn’t believe in soulmates, in fact, the concept of it upsets him on premise. But he does believe that everyone is where they are meant to be, and he’d leave Ballarat a hundred more times if it meant that every time he ends up with Charlie. Beautiful, frustrating, Charlie. Who annoyed him in a hundred, endearing ways every day.

  
“How could I not? Not only were you a man, but you were with Rose, you were Jean’s nephew, you were funny and kind. And me? The interloper? I didn’t think I was even on your radar in that way.”  
“You weren’t. Until you were.” That was true, as clumsily phrased as it was. Charlie was his best mate, and until that party, alone and sitting in the wet grass, annoyed that the water was making the back of his pants wet, did he realize that he’d somehow managed to fall in love with him, as well as be his best mate.

The song changes, and Charlie begins to sing along, horribly off key, even to Danny’s untrained ear. It’s one of the most lovely things he’s ever heard. Danny does know this song, the guy who sang it is dead. After a moment, he spoke again.  
“I think that people are just like socks.”  
“You’ve lost me.” Charlie said, brow creasing.  
“Well, think about it. You can wear as many combinations of socks as you want, but only one other sock makes a pair.”  
“Okay.”  
“We both dated other people, and we were like odd socks. Now we’re with each other, we’re like a pair.”  
“Of socks.”  
“Yeah.” Personally, he thought that it was a very clever metaphor that he’d come up with. Charlie shook his head and chuckled a warm little chuckle that caused little fireworks inside Danny’s brain. Charlie pulled him in for a kiss.  
“I love you.”  
“I thought you hated me.”  
“I can do both.” Danny kissed him again, and again after that too.


End file.
